RohanSJ Reviews

Loyalties (1986)

Unforgettable (at least for me)

[8/10 · 16 June 2005]

I'm amazed how well I remember this film, nearly 20 years after the only time I saw it. It paints a compelling picture of an outsider family's relationship with the small town in which it's arrived. The relationship has both overt and covert elements, and at the beginning of the film the viewer is let in on the secret of which the townspeople are unaware. I think that's part of what made this film so captivating for me: there was no whodunit aspect to distract me, so I was able to get fully immersed in the complexities of the developing relationships.

This is no Hollywood good-guys-vs.-bad-guys movie. There are shades of grey, and difficult tradeoffs.

I highly recommend this film. It's a shame that it doesn't seem to have received exposure outside Canada, as its themes are universal.

Praying with Anger (1992)

Shyamalan's first feature shows promise

[10 September 2004]

I saw this when it was premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.

It was a late entry, but the festival's programmers were so impressed by this debut feature by a young filmmaker (only 20 during shooting) that they put it on the program anyway. One of them (David Overbey as I recall, sadly now deceased) introduced Shyamalan and glowingly said something like "Watch this young man; he's going places and you'll be seeing a lot more of him". Pretty good assessment.

The film is about a teenager, born in India but raised in the U.S. (as Shyamalan was), who goes to his birthplace for a long visit and experiences major culture shock. He sees various aspects of local life with his American eyes, from trivial things to matters of life and death, and the film shows his bemusement while doing a good job of communicating the thoughts of the local characters. I would say that he chose well the issues to highlight (I too am a South Asian raised in the West, born in Canada to Sri Lankan parents who planned to go back but never did), like the importance of superstition and the local variety of racism. However, some parts were a bit too Hollywood for me, in particular the scene where the protagonist stops a lynch mob by preaching his American brand of morality - in much the same way that Captain Kirk used to prevent interstellar war with a few glib phrases.

After the screening, an audience member asked Shyamalan how autobiographical the film was. He replied that he had indeed taken the same kind of journey, but that the movie was definitely fictional. As he put it, "I did not quell a riot in India".

Another question from the audience was how much the movie had cost to make. His answer: "About a million". He didn't say where the money came from, but clearly someone took a chance on this talented young filmmaker. I'm sorry that the film didn't get released; it has stayed with me through the years despite my never having heard of the guy at the time. And now that I've seen other movies he's made, I'd like to watch this again to see more of their origins, much as I was fascinated by watching, long after it was made, Stanley Kubrick's first feature Fear and Desire.